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He/Him/His | Marxist-Leninist [☭] | Discord: robinnv.
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"Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God [...] Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any" — Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 111
“The often-reported impoliteness of the new leaders is understandable. What is less noticeable is the extreme courtesy these same leaders show toward their brothers and comrades. Their impolite behavior is first and foremost directed against the others, against the former colonialists who come to observe and investigate. The excolonized too often get the impression that the findings of these investigations are a foregone conclusion. The journalist is on assignment to justify them. The photos that illustrate the article provide proof that he knows what he is talking about and was actually there. The investigation sets out to prove that ‘everything went wrong as soon as we left.’ The journalists often complain they are badly treated, are forced to work under poor conditions, and come up against a wall of indifference or hostility. All this is quite normal. The nationalist leaders know that international opinion is forged solely by the Western press. When a Western journalist interviews us, however, it is seldom done to render us service. In the war in Algeria, for example, the most liberal-minded French reporters make constant use of ambiguous epithets to portray our struggle. When we reproach them for it, they reply in all sincerity [that] they are being objective. For the colonized subject, objectivity is always directed against him”— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pp. 36-37
“The Scheidemanns and Kautskys speak about ‘pure democracy; and ‘democracy’ in general for the purpose of deceiving the people and concealing from them the bourgeois character of present-day democracy. Let the bourgeoisie continue to keep the entire apparatus of state power in their hands, let a handful of exploiters continue to use the former, bourgeois, state machine! Elections held in such circumstances are lauded by the bourgeoisie, for very good reasons, as being ‘free’, ‘equal’, ‘democratic’ and ‘universal’. These words are designed to conceal the truth, to conceal the fact that the means of production and political power remain in the hands of the exploiters, and that therefore real freedom and real equality for the exploited, that is, for the vast majority of the population, are out of the question” — Vladimir Lenin, V. I. Lenin: Collected Works: Volume 28, pp. 368-369
“When the bourgeoisie of his time, focusing on the killing of hostages and the fires started by the Communards, denounced the Paris Commune as synonymous with the vilest barbarism, Marx replied that the practices of taking (and possibly executing) hostages and starting fires had been invented by the ruling classes and that, in any case, as far as fires were concerned, a distinction had to be made between the ‘vandalism of a desperate defense’ (that of the Communards) and the ‘vandalism of triumph [...] Except that, caught up as he is in a cult of erudition, Marie does not even reflect on the texts of the authors dearest to him. He mocks me by giving his intervention the title ‘Gulag Socialism!’, but one could, with the same irony, make fun of Lenin’s (and Trotsky’s) Soviet Russia — ‘Cheka Socialism!,’ ‘the Cheka’s Socialist Revolution!’, or ‘The Socialism (or the Socialist Revolution) of Hostage-takers’ (keep in mind that, in Their Morals and Ours, Trotsky is also forced to defend himself against the charge that he resorted to this practice). In truth, using this kind of irony so dear to Marie, one can liquidate any revolution. To wit: the ‘Shot-hostage Commune,’ the ‘Guillotine of Freedom and Equality,’ etc., etc. At the same time, these aren’t imaginary examples. This is precisely how the tradition of reactionary thought has attacked the French Revolution (especially Jacobinism), the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, and so on” — Domenico Losurdo, "Primitive Thinking and Stalin as Scapegoat"